Cry of the Wolf, Chapter 8: It’s a Trap!

Zach returns after Adriane’s brief, one-sided talk with Moonshadow, and gets kinda pissed at Adriane’s use of magic. Since Aldenmor is rife with magic tracking beasties, casting spells willy-nilly isn’t a Good Idea.

And speaking of magic, the dragonflies show up and give Adriane a hand-drawn map (well, paw-drawn, because Ozzie made it) to the Fairy Glen, the center of Aldenmor’s magic. Hopefully the Fairimentals, who live there, can help Adriane find Stormbringer and return home, right? But Zach rips up the map, citing that enemies could take it.

Yeah, dick move right there.

Anyway, a horde of gargoyles is now surrounding the valley; they tracked Rocky, the Uber-Magical Egg of Unknown Origin. The party’s now trapped and getting hit by balls of unearthly green fire. Luckily, Adriane sees a way out: she uses Telekinesis to make a bunch of boulders fall on the gargoyles, allowing the party to escape.

Victory is short lived, though: the surviving gargoyles follow the party and attack! Adriane casts many Magic Missiles, and Zach uses his bad-ass sword to hack-and-slash at the gargoyles. They eventually kill them all, but their escape comes at a price: Wind Dancer is gravely injured, poisoned by the gargoyles’ irradiated claws. Zach has the bright idea to head to the Fairy Glen, where the Fairimentals could heal him. But wait — did he just rip up the map earlier? Not to worry — Zach knows the way there, so they didn’t need the map in the first place!

Still, Zach is kinda a dick for a) ripping up the map, and b) not telling Adriane he knew where the Fairy Glen was until after the battle.

EDIT: Changes in the e-book edition

Adriane’s Wolf Stone glows red, not amber, when detecting danger.

Adriane doesn’t cry when she wishes Emily was around to cast Heal on Wind Dancer.

Zach says that the gargoyles “want [the egg] bad” instead of “[the egg] is important enough to risk a full-scale war”.

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5 comments

I just re-read the first three revised editions a few days ago, and I think that this is the first time the good guys actually kill things! Well, explicitly kill things. It wasn’t clear whether Kara killed the banshees in AtG or just made them evaporate away.

Argh, I hate it when authors make the characters withhold info like that from each other in order to create suspense. It feels so artificial.

You’re right: this is the first time the heroes kill anything in this series. The girls only knocked back the manticore in Circles in the Stream, and it’s not clear if Kara blasted the banshees into smithereens in the last book. (I always thought they just escaped into the nearest body of water.)
I am going to miss Zach’s sword-fighting skills. He seems to abandon his weapon after he gets the Dragon Stone later in the series. Is there something against mages using weapons, or did RR totally forget that Zach has a bad-ass sword?

Damn, this book gets pretty dark, with all the dead animals and graphic-ish (kid’s book-wise) descriptions of killing stuff. Minus the horrible puns (RAAAAAGE), it’s exactly the sort of stuff I loved to read when I was ten XD Morbid kid…

I don’t remember noticing that Zach *didn’t* use his sword, but now that I think of it, I can’t remember him doing so after CotW. Ack, just another symptom of Zach being a woefully under-utilized character. Here’s to hoping that he gets much more “screentime” in Shadow Warrior. Although, RR tends to forget stuff a lot. I just noticed that Adriane calls the school “Stonehill Middle School” in CitS, but the narration calls it “Stonehill Junior High” in FC. X_x

And when I first read “It’s a Trap!”, I totally thought of the meme-verse meaning of that. SURPRISE EVERYONE’S A WEREWOLF AND THAT HOT CHICK IS A MAN would be the best twist everrrrrrrrr.

I was rather surprised rereading about “green gore” and Zach decapitating monsters. It feels a bit at odds with the romantic fantasy feel of Avalon.

It makes sense why Zach would destroy a map that would be invaluable to their enemies, but it’s silly that he wouldn’t explain that he knows the way by heart until their enemies are right on top of them.